Kristina + Chaz | Fishtown Philly Engagement Session

When couples reach out to us for Philly engagement sessions, we get so excited over all the potential hidden gems and iconic spots that we can photograph at (and lets face it, we love all the logistics that go into planning these things!). Chaz and Kristina wanted just that, a fun and laid-back Philly engagement session that hit some really cool spots to showcase what they loved about living in the city together and their sweet relationship.

Oh – did we mention it was scorching hot!? We almost rescheduled because of the crazy heat, but decided to go ahead, packed LOTS water and ice-packs, and everything turned out perfectly!

Since our first visit to Fishtown last year, we absolutely fell in love with this part of Philadelphia.

Funny enough, we are both pretty quick to admit – we’re not exactly “city people”, and for the longest time growing up together we were honestly not all that into going into big cities like Philly and New York.

Over the past few years as we’ve spent a good deal of time traveling, we’ve photographed in a lot of metro areas on the East Coast (Philly, NYC, Boston), have gone to the West Coast and shot in Portland, OR, and even visited Reykjavik in Iceland and grabbed some street photos you can see here (probably our favorite city on the planet – so far).

Anyways, we ended up putting together a great timeline that allowed us to comfortably hit a whole lot of great spots in about 2 hours of shooting and traveling around the city. Yes – we mapped everything out using Google Maps in case you were wondering how nerdy we can be. What can we say – we like a little planning to make sure we can get the best photos possible for our couples!!

Some of the landmark spots included Penn Treaty Park (has great views of the George Washington Bridge in the background), Elfreth’s Alley in Old City for that small brick street charm that is a remnant of the US’s colonial days, and wrapping up at Race Street Pier with an incredible sunset (+ making great use of the background lights of the other piers in the area).

While getting to photograph these popular spots is great on it’s own, our favorite part about doing laid back engagement shoots in Philly has to be taking a little time to just wander the streets.

We parked on Front Street and were able to hit up some of the awesome murals the city is so well known for. We’ve seen a few of them before, some even in a previous engagement session we did in this area of the city, but still came across some new ones too as we wandered. 🙂

These murals are really sweet in their own right (props to the awesome artists who put them together!), and as photographers we freakin’ love them because they add some much needed texture and color to the urban scenery.